With its brightly colored comic book style graphics, Champions Online is bound to stand out. Developed by Cryptic Studios the superhero-based MMORPG was released on the 1st of September, 2011. Originally the game was available on a subscription plan, but at the beginning of 2011 a free-to-play system was also introduced, now players having the ability to choose between the two.

The action takes place in the Champions universe fragmented in different types of settings. Each location is then fragmented into several instances, each with player cap of one hundred characters. This cascading fragmentation has led to the game being heavily criticized for its instanced universe.

Champions Online offers a simplified, yet fast paced and action oriented MMORPG experience. The number of skills a character has is considerably smaller than in other MMORPGs, but battle events link together powering up devastating skills and thus encounters don’t last for a very long time. Armor customizations are in most cases purely esthetical in nature and damage is calculated from base stats and weapon stats. Currently there are eight class archetypes available for free players and six more available for paying customers. The free characters are: The Inferno, The Glacier, The Marksman, The Blade, The Soldier, The Grimoire, The Mind and The Behemoth. The list of paid characters includes: The Specialist, The Savage, The Void, The Inventor, The Tempest and The Devastator.

At level 25 players can create and customize their own Arch-nemesis together with its own set of minions. For the remaining levels the player will constantly have fight off these minions as they will constantly lay in waiting and ambush the player when he or she least expects it.

This game is fun and addictive. I’v put in 300 days of play time and plan to put in more after a 2 month break from it.

Lets start with the bad parts. The PVP isn’t that good, only a few instances to choose from. You need to have a good internet conection or you well have alot of lag/pushback and sever dissconnect problems. You have to do alot of grinding in order to Level up. Level cap is 40. Crafting is can be a pain if you want to change from one specialization to another. You have to start from zero skill points and work up again to the max skill level and they only let you have one crafting specialization. If you want to go back to your previous crafting skill you have to start all over again. The liftime subscription is a little heavy, $299. And last, ther are bugs, not realy big ones but after awhile they can get irritating.

Now on to the good parts of the game. -The hero creater is they most impressive part of the game. I’m not sure how many options there are for the costume creater because there is just so much to choose from. -The community is very helpfull, in-game and on the web forums. -You can PVP duel anyware at any time if you choose to. -The graphics may not be cutting edge but the Dev’s did that on purpuse. they wanted to make it feel more comice book like and did a good job at doing so. -You don’t even have to buy the game of the shelf, you can dowload it off the web site for free. -All though I chose to buy it to make it easier to download on to other computers if I need to. -You get to have more then one hero (You start from LvL Zero on all new heroes) and dozens of costume slots for them if you have the Cryptic Points to spend to get the extra slots. (If you run out of Cryptic Points you can buy more on the Champions web site). -It’s Free to Play for those who are not sure about it. You can play as long as you want, but there are some in game restrictions. Lastly, many superhero powers to chose from.

honestly i downloaded this game expecting great things and i was SOOOOO disappointed with the graphics and feel of the game i immediately stopped playing it’s not even worth the download time there are many mmos out there that are f2p this one is not worth it. This was supposed to be released on xbox360 but it got canceled i’m guessing because
the xbox guys saw 0 potential in it so if you’re reading this stop downloading it and search for a better mmo that is f2p

I played Champions Online for a total of 2 days, got to level 13, and realized that the game owners are extremely money hungry, example: you start with 1 bag, you unlock more bags, up to a total of 4, will cost you roughly $2 each, you can only make a total of 3 characters, 3rd being given from the item mall for free, for every 2 characters will cost you 1,120 Cryptic Points, roughly $11, Each extra piece of costume will cost you roughly $5 a piece, not to mention each “adventure pack” will cost you 460 Cryptic Points, and since it’s $5 for 500 points, you can do the math yourself. After noticing all that i didn’t even bother to look for more. I quit playing it the same day. Honestly it’s a good game, but not worth that much money by far. If you’re downloading it and are just looking for a game to play for free, this certainly isn’t the game for you, or me for that matter.

@Exodus121…you do know that you can pay monthly for the game and unlock most (gold limit, character slots, power customization, bag etc.) of those features u just mention right? though you do have to pay 15$ a month (but what p2p to f2p game ISNT 15$ a month nowadays) and you have to keep paying monthly to keep your stuff unlocked. the “Free to play” part of the game is a lure or SAMPLE of the game that encourages players to pay monthly or… for the “Suckers” buy content via item mall. my suggestion for all those who feel this way, buy a controller, DL the game, play it free for a bit, go gold and I guarantee you’ll enjoy it 10x better =)